Profiteer

Tetsami started to circle the table, pacing the slowly rotating globe. “Our first problem with the ground team is getting them in without flagging security. It calls for a distraction to misdirect everyone so we can get Shane up to a perimeter guard. The first problem we have is the Emerson field. A military screen can detect any EM active source crossing the perimeter—that includes Shane’s armor and Random. Second problem is the RF traffic and the transponder codes—obviously altered since Shane defected. We need to knock out all that to give Shane a window. And do it without letting them realize something’s up.”

 

As she passed Zanzibar, Tetsami heard her mutter, “Good luck.”

 

“Gladiatorial combat to the rescue.”

 

Not a few people said, “Huh?”

 

Tetsami hit the remote and a small yellow speck appeared over the planet’s equator, pacing the planet’s rotation. “The problem of getting Shane in baffled me for a while—I mean, what kind of massive ECM could I pull on the whole GA&A complex that wouldn’t look like someone deliberately fucking with them? The solution is bonehead simple—if you ever watch the public airwaves on this rock. That yellow speck there is a Troy Broadcasting Corp satellite.” Tetsami realized that her smile had grown hard. This part of her plan was petty revenge. However, it did have an elegance about it.

 

“The sat’s a new one, right over Godwin, and it’s been blasting anything that gets close to it.”

 

Tetsami punched the remote and on came footage from the wattage war between the gladiators and the demolition derby. “Troy Broadcasting has been beaming targeted high-power broadcasts straight into Godwin. They overpower any ground-based transmission, and when they really get happy, they bleed their broadcast over every holo channel available. Folks have been picking this stuff up on computers, aircar autopilots, power cables—you get the picture. Someone eventually is going to nuke that terrorist sat, but while it’s there ...”

 

“Oh ...” Ivor always understood her sense of humor, even if he sometimes didn’t appreciate it.

 

“I can hack that sat, and tightbeam their whole broadcast, full power, right on top of GA&A. They won’t know what the fuck’s going on, but for a while, this is what they’ll be getting on their tac database. It’ll take them at least fifteen minutes to get unscrambled. That’s the minimum it’ll take someone to directly program the main screen to block out the RF overload.”

 

Tetsami returned the holo to the overview of the GA&A complex. Overlaying it was a timer and moving blue dots representing what they knew of the guard patrols—mostly Shane’s info, supplemented by some clandestine observation from several tall buildings in West Godwin. The timer sped by as Tetsami reviewed the movements of the blue dots. After going over what they knew, Tetsami froze the image. The timer read 06:50:00.

 

“We’re setting up the tunnel for the strike. In three days we’ll have both access points excavated.” Two red lights activated. One underneath the far southeast corner of the complex, almost directly underneath perimeter tower number seven. One at the fringes of the image in the woods four hundred meters away from the back of the office complex.

 

“The subsurface team is here.” Tetsami highlighted the red dot under the complex. “The ground team is here.” The red dot in the woods glowed brighter.

 

“How in hell are you getting all that subsurface digging past them?” Zanzibar asked.

 

Tetsami shrugged and smiled. “They don’t know what’s normal, ain’t got anyone to say a subsurface tremor is wrong. Especially when we time the digging to match Proudhon’s departure schedule. Every launch at the spaceport brings us a centimeter closer. By now they’ve explained the vibrations to themselves and are busy ignoring them. A simple computer is down there now, maintaining the illusion. The intermittent digging is why it’ll take three days.”

 

“Isn’t someone going to check that out?” Zanzibar went on.

 

For the first time since the presentation began, Dom said something. “What they’ll find, if they bother to check, is that the mountain range they’re at the foot of is riddled with holes, and rings like a bell if you hit it. Every contractor I know bitches about never getting accurate soundings; any audio picture of the rock around there is so filled with ghosts and echoes, that resonance from the spaceport would seem a logical explanation—if they even notice the digging.”